Our Saturday

I came across this post on Friday night and showed it to my little guy. Of course that started his 'talking-a-million-miles-a-minute-about-his-ideas' thing that he has been doing lately- so cute and proof I am definitely helping nurture his creativity. Well usually cute except when it's 7am on a workday when I'm trying to get ready and he follows me from each room of the house listing all his ideas. Of course I knew what we'd be doing on Saturday and it fit well with the halloween weekend too (not to mention mommy needing to be close to the computer to finish her assignment and presentation).

One can of $7 silver spray paint from Home Depot, 2 boxes, and some printable gauges and dials (thanks clipart!) and viola- 2 homemade robots.

The little one has an extra cute robotic voice "I.. am.. a... robot... I.. am.. a.. robot...."



While we were waiting for the paint to dry we took out the collections of cute Mickey Mouse paint chips we also grabbed (free!) and made some color books. I cut out chipboard pieces for the front and back and used eyelets and ribbons to hold them together. For the little guys book we wrote the names of each color so he can see the spelling of each word (since he thankfully knows all his colors of course)



Nana also surprised us with some cool halloween foam kits for the kids. We tried out best to put them together (@#$$#!!!) and when that didn't work we resorted to gluing the pieces down to construction paper and letting the kids decorate. When we were all finished I cut the leftover pieces into shapes and they spent 45 minutes having a late night Saturday bath before bed building more robots. See this post and prepare to be amazed. We were! So much that we spent Sunday afternoon before trick-or-treating in the bath again with more foam pieces (dug out some foam packs I had picked up from the dollar store). No fancy cutting here- just basic geometric shapes turned robot and alien monsters and obstacle courses.

now I know my ABCs

Sometimes I have troubles matching my ABC's with the sounds so it's nice to have visual cues to help me out. :) Plus it's a great tool for speech therapy.

Here's how you can make your own ABC box:

1) Steal the original idea from someone else's blog

2) Spend $10.79 (on sale) at Canadian Tire for a box meant to hold nails/ screws

3) Spend another $1.50 for some letter stickers- epoxy them on with Glossy Accents so they don't keep falling off




4) Go digging for what is now being referred to in my house as "small stuff" (most of this we already had although I did spent about $5 at the $ store). Actually we've been talking about this 'small stuff' since last Wednesday- the little guy is coming up with ideas non-stop (yep I'm good) and keeps talking about letters (big mommy point for me!) For some of the harder letters we used clipart because no matter how hard we searched there were no mini YAKs or OSTRICHs to be found in this house :) I'd love to pick up a little laminator so they last a little while longer. We also added some magnetic letters (another $1.50 purchase) but I'd love to find some smaller case alphas to add as well. I tried raiding my scrap stash but it's already been ransacked (evidently I scrap too much). This might help encourage him to use smaller-case when he is writing (he still insists capital letters are the ONLY way to spell his name (even had a long "discussion" with his teacher about it on the first day of K!)

5) Fill boxes!!!



B- bandaid, bucket, butterfly, bat, button, barrel
C- cow, card, crayon, car, cake, cup
W- wheel, whale, worker, window
P- princess, plate, parrot, popsciel, pumpkin, penny, pirate, paperclip, pig
D- dog, donkey, dino, duck, donut



A- alligator, ants, axe, acorn, army guy
L- lizard, ladybug, lego, lion
H- heart, hat, horse, house
R- raft, take, rock, rooster, ring
T- truck, tiger, tree, turtle, tanl

And in case you want to make your own, here's some ideas for the harder ones (= lotas clip art).

E- eraser, earth, elephant, eight, eskimo, envelope, ear
I- icecream, icecube, iceskate, insect, igloo
J- jack, jet, jam, jacket, jaguar
K- key, king, kettle, karate, kiss, kite, kangaroo
N- nail, nailpolish, nest, neckllace
0- orange, octupus, olive, otter, ostrich
Q- queen, question (mark), quarter, quilt, quill
U- umbrella, umpire, unicorn
V- violin, van, vaccum, valentine,
X- xray, xylophone, x-men (lol),
Y- yoyo, yak, yellow, yarn
Z- zoo, zebra, zero, zombie


It's a great tool for the little man and will get lots of use with the little one too. She already sings the song :)

our latest two boxes

So while 'surfing blogs when I should have been doing something important like cleaning my disaster of a house or doing coursework for that Masters degree that I'm supposed to be working on hard on,' I came across another cool bloggy site- Pink and Green Mama

And of course I decided right then and there that an ocean box was exactly what I needed to make my kids-but instead of just rocks I'll add gallons of water. And wait if I keep their socks on will that equal washing the floors?

Add colored rocks and shells from the good ole Dollarama, one tube of sea animals, the lego boat, a scuba pirate dude from dollarama, the MickeyD's mermaid, a treasure chest that used to have some sort of hard yucky gum, a $7 plastic bin + 2 kids = so much fun.



But what happens when winter comes? It snows of course! Except this kind is way more fun because it's inside. But it's still fluffy and cold and you can shape it, kinda. And it lasts weeks!

Add some penguins, polar bears, a Reindeer and some Husky dogs and we have winter!



Next up- sand. Yes I'm crazy but crazy is the best kind.

things i love

1. long weekends- especially when they get to start at noon on Friday. The kids & I had a blast at the green shack at the park. I miss the days at as a kid playing with the parks & rec teenager- so fun! Friday we planted stuff and had a water fight, and even learned a new sand tag game that the lil guy didn't quite catch on to (making it extra cute to watch!) We played until lil girl pooped and thus ruined the party (haha- had no diaper bag so we had no choice to go home).

2. chai tea lattes for my Tassimo- yum!!!!!

3. going down lbs on the scale without effort- A++. It seems I go up the scale without much effort so this was much better. When I told dh he replied back "I thought you looked like you lost weight." haha nice try buddy. You got your new iphone toy so leave me alone :P

4. scrapbooking! I made a page last night! (and yes I should be doing an online module for school which is why scrapbooking seemed *very* appealing last night! But regardless of why, I remembered that I miss my paper and glue!)

5.Day trips with the family. We're going to a brand-new dinosaur park today where the dinos are lifesize and robotic. I mean how much cooler can you get? (I think I am the most excited). Plus I need to put my dino stamps to use (see #4).

6. etsy! Seriously can this site be any cooler? In the last week I've ordered a cool Superman/Batman cape, 10 blank capes and 10 blank masks for the big superhero party (did I mention the girls get pink and purple?). I need to hook my paypal up to my bank account because this could get dangerous on the ole credit card!

7. conversations with an almost-5 year old:

mommy: I don't want you to turn 5 because then you won't want to sleep in my bed anymore

superhero: I promise to sleep in your bed. Even when I'm an adult.

mommy: I don't believe you.

superhero: I promise I will pee in your bed forever. yeah.

(okay not sounding so cute anymore, forgot about that part. Moms always forgot "that" part- but I won't because it's gotta go on a layout now!).

Look out Fisher Price!

How cute are these?



from l to r- my little boy (he likes the monster t-shirt), my little girl, me (can you see the resemblence?), not sure, baby girls best friend, not sure

I rediscovered a post on Jenn's blog and thought wow those would be some cute homemade Little People! So off to Michael's we went because of course when I get something in my head I need to make it make it happen, NOW! We found the heads with the faces prepainted (I just did the hair!) and then we found wooden spools that we painted then modge podged with scrap patterned papers (because of course I have more than enough scrap paper to make as many little People as there are people in North America).



The little girl thinks they are very pretty. :P

While we were in the wood section we also found a whole bunch of little wooden blocks in a package for about $3 (= SCORE!). After gluing them into different sized buildings both kiddos had fun painting them up and then I did the final touches. To make it easier I used blank label stickers from the $ store to make the windows and doors. Our town is complete with a pizza place, 7-11, apartment building, houses, police station and school.


A black foam board ($2 at Walmart) and some crayons and voila- our own little city for the lil guys collection of micro cars!!!!


We also bought road sign stickers (Dollarama is our friend) but we still need to pick up toothpicks so we can push them into the foam and make our city roads more authentic (may have to use a pencil and make some potholes too :P) The only thing is missing is a mayor and tax collection.

What did we do this weekend?

My Family from WiddlyTinks.com

1) Made this family thing- oh the wonderful things to pass time on the world wide web
2) Felt like crap and missed a girls night out :(
3) Made lots and lots of Pixo creations- the little guy really loves these and mommy does too because they are no mess.
4) cleaned
5) cleaned at the preschool (our cleaning night) = slave labour. 1 million toys + dishwasher = shoot me now.
6) scrapbooked a little bit. I need to keep my sanity somehow!
7) played in the water at the park (It really felt like summer!) and had a little picnic with the family
8) tackled Wal-Mart (needed groceries) and won!
9) time for bed because Monday morning is coming quickly nite!

some fun from my last crop!

Daddy took the kids to the Valley Zoo while I had to work :( But at least I got a cool scrapbook page out of it! Had fun using the collage feature in Picasa- love it and then off to Costco for printing- so easy!


Evan loves to show his bum for the camera. Drives me crazy, yes, but had to capture this moment in time. Afterall, he's bound to outgrow this stage, right? Let's hope so.


I just love this picture I took- isn't she lovely? I made her :)


Off to due some cleaning around the house!